Wine

Big data is all around us –– even in the wine we drink. UC Davis’ Smart Farm Big Idea is tackling how to take some of this vast trove of information and synthesize it for the benefit of agriculture.

Mason Earles, assistant professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology and the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, is applying big data by merging agricultural and machine learning to glean information that improves vineyards’ health and yields.

For the first time since the 1980s, University of California, Davis, researchers have released new varieties of wine grapes. The five new varieties, three red and two white, are highly resistant to Pierce’s disease, which costs California grape growers more than $100 million a year. The new, traditionally bred varieties also produce high-quality fruit and wine.

University of California, Davis, scientists will lead a collaborative effort to study grapevine red blotch disease, which threatens the $162 billion U.S. grape industry. The virus causes red veins and blotches on grape leaves. The fruit on diseased plants is smaller, ripens more slowly, and its sugars and colors are muted.

When it comes to hands-on learning, Isabelle Straka doesn’t limit herself to the classroom. The second-year master’s student in Viticulture and Enology puts newly acquired skills to the test in producing her own wine label.

On-going wildfires have created great devastation in Napa and Sonoma Counties and have spread into Mendocino and Solano Counties as well. This region is among California’s best known wine-growing regions and many are interested in how these fires damage the wine industry and affect grape and wine supply and markets.

Local climate and environmental conditions leave a specific "fingerprint" on the composition of wine.

Regionally distinctive groups of bacteria and fungi, associated with local climate and environmental conditions, may leave a very specific “fingerprint” on a wine’s chemical composition, report University of California, Davis, researchers who collaborated on a new study with two Napa Valley wineries.